262 



softening the skin, of preventing its becoming dry, or chapped*. The 

 pomatums employed at the present day at the toilet, possess the same ad- 

 vantages. The continual transudation of this animal oil renders it ne- 

 cessary, occasionally, to clean the skin by bathing; the water removes 

 the dust and the other impurities which may be attached to its surface 

 by the fluid which lucubrates it. It is this humour which soils our linen, 

 and obliges us so frequently to renew that in immediate contact with the 

 skin, and which makes the water collect in drops when we come out of 

 the bath, See. 



Though the parts in which there is found the greatest quantity of sub- 

 cutaneous fat, are not always the most oily, and though one cannot con- 

 sider this secretion as a mere filtration of this adeps through the tissue of 

 the skin, corpulence has, however, a manifest influence on its quantity. I 

 know several very corpulent persons in whom it appears to be evacuated 

 by perspiration, on their being heated by. the slightest exertion. They all 

 grease their linen in less than twenty-four hours. An excess of the oily 

 matter of perspiration is injurious, by preventing the evacuation of the 

 perspiration and its solution in the atmosphere. 



We all know, how, after the epidermis has been removed, the slightest 

 contact is painful: that of the air is sufficient to bring on a painful in- 

 flammation of the skin exposed by the application of a blister. The epi- 

 dermis, as was likewise mentioned in speaking of the absorption, placed 

 on the limits of the animal economy, and in a manner inorganic, serves 

 to prevent heterogeneous substances from being too readily admitted into 

 the body, and, at the same time, it lessens the too vivid action of external 

 objects on our organs. All organized and living bodies are furnished 

 with this covering, and, in all, in the seed of a plant, in its stem and on 

 the surface of the body, in man and animals, it bears to the skin the great- 

 est analogy of function and nature. Incorruptibility is, in a manner, its 

 essence, and is its peculiar character; and in tombs which contain mere- 

 ly the dust of the skeleton, it is not uncommon to find the whole, and in 

 a state to be readily distinguished, the thickened epidermis that forms the 

 soal of the foot,. and especially the heel. However, this incorruptibility 

 is possessed, as well as others of the qualities of the skin, by the hairs and 

 the nails, which may be considered as its appendages. 



CXXXII. Of the Nails. The nails are, in fact, only a part of the epi- 

 dermis : they are continuous with it, and, after death, fall off along with 

 it. They are thicker and harder ; like it they are inorganic and lamel- 

 lated; they grow rapidly from the root towards their free extremity; 

 they reproduce themselves rapidly, and acquire several inches in length, 

 when the part beyond the ends of the fingers and toes has not been re- 

 moved; as is the case with the Indian fakirs. In-this state of develope- 

 ment, they bend over the tips of the fingers and toes, and impair the sense 

 of touch, whose free enjoyment is preferable to any advantages which 

 savages can derive from their long and crooked nails, in defending them- 

 selves, or in attacking animals, or tearing to pieces those which they have 

 killed in hunting. The nails are quite insensible, and the reason that so 

 much pain is felt when ths nails run into the flesh, and that the operation 

 of tearing them out, which is sometimes necessary, is so painful, is, that 



* The reply of the old soldier is well known, who, on being asked by Augustus, how 

 he came to live so long, said he owed his long life to the use of \vine inwardly, and to 

 that of oil outwardly ; intus rino, extusoleo. .Author's Note. 



